Hellrisen
by Tiphon Set
Summary: An original tale set in the 'Hellraiser' universe. Subsequent chapters will be posted in the following days.
1. Chapter 1

**"...and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see them, but they are my tears." - N.K. Jemisin**

Like an all consuming burn upon Asia's soul, Alex was to remain with her for life, ever tightening, ceaseless and searing. Her treasured memories served now as a bitter reminder of her hopeless absence. Alex's sin-bound lips, her taste, the feel of her generous touch and all the muscle tensing pleasure that resulted from it. It's been a long two years since the split, with each day since callously contributing to the noxious sorrow that buries her alive. She slumps deeper within herself against the dirt dusted concrete wall of the derelict warehouse, sequestered from the world, obscured even from God's all-seeing eyes.

The wind hums an ambivalent tune of adante notes that whistle through broken window panes. "You were my soul..." Asia said with a spiritless sigh, "Without you, I'm just an empty meat puppet." Her eyes well and glisten from tears held back. She listlessly handles an ornate gold plated piece of antiquity. It was a gift from Alex to commemorate Asia's first full year of sobriety. A fallacious achievement... Asia had kept her relapse weeks prior to the milestone a secret. The box held in hand reflected its gilded gleam alongside of her broken promises. She charted the course of its elaborate designs with the same tender affection that she'd trace Alex's lips when she smiled. The waxing and waning of the cube's patterns were accompanied by touch. Its indents and eccentricities echoed Alex's body along webs of artistic conception that rivaled the battered beauty of their relationship.

The hum becomes a moan... Nature's pulse quickens. The windows tremble in their frames, rattling with the sound of chattering teeth. The moonlight that had snuck past the accumulation of dirt on the glass grew dimmer. Asia depresses a circular segment at the center of one of the box's four faces. To her amazement it responds, dividing a section of itself and intializing a new configurement. A tonal pattern snaps on billowing out from the tiny source with the cadence of a lullaby, yet carried along its subtle cords a sense of sickening dread. All light had now drained from the warehouse, and she was immersed in a darkness witnessed only by the dead.

The tune that was emanating from the box had left upon the issuance of its final note a silence that matched the starkness of the abysmal dark... Its appetite threatening to consume Asia's very thoughts. The titanic gears of Chronos' clock slacken, eventually stopping altogether. She was now deprived of two of her main senses, heightening the experience of the remaining three. An acrid iron after-taste of liver swirled in her mouth, surely from the speedball she'd boosted earlier in the day blowing out a vein. The hairs on her arms stood. Her skin was caressed by a tingling sensation as if charged by static electricity. She felt balmy gusts of alternating warm and cool air undulate around her, tinged with the unmistakable stench of decay with faint accents of vanilla.

The immense hush and blackness that had engulfed her, receded like a great wave drawing back into the night sea, bequething a brilliant glow several feet ahead. She then heard chattering, thinking at first it might be the windows again, but soon realized came from a single source within the light. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the radiance acclimating by subtle degrees. As the luminance subsided she could decipher the forms of three beings walking toward her, their steps sonorous and sharp. They had not emerged from a light source as her eyes had been fooled, but were themselves the source of light. Their flesh irradiated with a bioluminescence and varnished with the icy pallor of the moon's facade.

She was awed by the sublime atrocity of their appearence. As they edged closer, Asia observed a paradigm of perverse bodily modification. Naked flesh elaborately embroidered with pins served as the junctions for thin wires that peeled back segments of skin exposing musculature. Scarified with glyphic designs, their bodies were a work of grotesque art composed of stitched tissue, ligaments of cables woven through and around anatomy and other skilled embellishments. They stand over her bearing an air of victorian poise and elegance.

"Oh... How lovely." Lauded the one who stood at the center. Fastened around her neck was a brace that extended it beyond its natural length. At the midpoint of the throat was a mechanism resembling a pair of surgical retractors that outstretched the flesh at either side of an oozing wound, giving it a labial appearance. They all stared at Asia lasciviously, eyes glassed with lust.

"Exquisite." Added her companion, fondling the vaginal opening in her throat.

"Her eyes burn with sorrow." She shudders guiding his eager hand to the spiral contraption tacked to her areola stretching the nipple several inches. "Do you know who we are?" Asia's lips are palsied. She was further unnerved by the vexing chatter of teeth the wretch to the right compulsively engaged in. Struggling to mantain her composure, she bites her lip and focuses on the question.

"You're demons." Asia answered.

"To some..." said the female masochist.

"We are the habitants of Leviathan's dream... Members of the order of the Gash." The male leaves the nipple unattended. He leans toward her, his face filetted lengthwise with ribbons of stripped flesh. "Are you not content with earthly pleasures? Would you like to experience the pleasure we provide?" Her eyes are magnectically fixed to his, considering his vague proposal.

"What do you know about pleasure?" Asia asked, "You're monsters."

"A great deal more than you can possibly imagination." He says haughtily. "We can unbend the mortal coil... Join us or stay and rot with the rest." His statement resonated with a striking timbre that she couldn't ignore. Remain where she was as infectious human waste and chase the vaporous dragon or follow these devils into the beast's lair. "Know this, the labyrinth is a cruel domain... But your world is worse." Asia's eyes were burdened by consideration. Surely these beings couldn't be more insufferable than the stifling loneliness that ceaselessly plagued her.

"Okay..." Came the uneasy decision, "I'll go."


	2. Chapter 2

**"The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep" - Henry Maudsley**

The second concentric circle of hell was where Mulciber had constructed the labyrinth. Walls of polished black limestone etched with sigils were the vessels through which nourishing suffering was delivered to Leviathan. Guttural moans and screams ricochet through corridors with the speed of electrical synapses. Souls were bound to their torments within cells arranged in honeycomb formations. At the center was a monolithic pool where Leviathan's heart dwelled, submerged in its warm black blood. Splintering from this, were canals that extended out great distances and gathered the liquid in reservoirs that were used as a nutritive soup to regenerate even the most mutilated of hell's captives.

* * *

A peculiar hush had descended upon the labyrinth... The usual choir of shrieking had been replaced by whispers circulated amongst detainees. "Where are they?" asked a young man confined to a cell with no discernable entryway. He was accompanied by a gaunt elderly man who stooped in the corner picking his toe nails. "I am Lucio... What is your name?" Chewing on his long ratty beard, he was inattentive to Lucio's effort at conversation. The abuses of his jailors had not inured him to the discomfort of silence, so he continued to fish for a topic that might spark the elder's interest.

Hours had passed like amber trickling down the bark of a tree during the uneasy stalemate. Talking was all Lucio could do to keep his mind sharp, even if he was to be his own audience. "I've heard whispers..." He said with a faraway look in his eyes, "There's one among us who defies the cenobites. "The Tearless", they call him. A great man who has endured their tortures since the labyrinth's conception." The elder's silence is broken with a swaggering laugh. Lucio sits upright, "You've heard of him?" The elder nods with a smirk. "You've met him!?" Grinning widely, the elder nods again. "Unbelievable! I wish to know of him... You have a story, go on, tell it!" The elder returns to chewing his beard and the pruning of nails that had occupied him during the whole of his time with the loquacious Lucio. "Why do you refuse to speak, you withered old cretin!?" The elder frustratedly spits out his beard and opens his mouth, pointing to a scabbed hollow where his tongue had resided.

* * *

The ruins of the ancient amphitheater was where the assembly had gathered. Dukes of hell and cenobites of the highest order were seated side by side filling pews that stretched out beyond the range of sight. It was a sea shimmering with surgical steel, punctuated by leather vestments bonded to ashen skin. The entirety of the Gash had congregated to decide the fate of one individual. "Her suffering would be legendary, if it were not eclipsed by her perseverance!" Cried one of them. Agitated proclamations poured in one after another.

"She's insurmountable!"

"Even the Furies have failed to produce results..."

"It has been said that she _laughed_ as they ravaged her!"

"She cannot be tamed! She scorns us with every breath!"

"Each of our efforts have been fruitless!"

The cascade of concern had descended into frenzy. "I elect we cast her into the abyss!" One of them suggested. The idea spread like fire through the crowd. They began to chant in unison.

"TO THE ABYSS! TO THE ABYSS! TO THE ABYSS!"

"NO!" Came a booming declaration from the center of the stage. There stood an imperial looking cenobite whose face and head had been engraved with a geometric pattern of interlocking hexagons, long plantinum pins placed at each point. "We are not in the habit of waste. Retrieve her from the cesspit. I shall conclude what to do with "The Tearless" once I have seen her myself."

Asia's feet are slid along the ground as she's dragged up to the stage, leaving a snail trail behind her. Drenched from the restorative liquid and naked, she is forced to kneel before the pin headed duke. Several moments pass languidly as he stares into her eyes, penetrating them and peering into her soul; She stares back with equal intensity. Tens of thounsands of eyes are fixed on this unceasing moment, until she flashes the duke a defiant smile, causing gasps to erupt from the assemblage. He coolly smiles in return before gesturing for her to be taken away. The denomination buzzes with whisperings as she is hauled off. "It is evident..." the duke began, "That the eons spent in Leviathan's grace has dulled your sense of invention. This women is teaching you a lesson, if only you were not so unwilling to hear it. In all your efforts you've lacked a critical aspect... Imagination. We owe everything to imagination, for it was the seed from which our universe sprouted. Certainly you have exhautsed every corporeal torment, explored every carnal punishment. Yet there is one torment available to us... One that is enduring above all." A collective breath is held by the sadomasochistic multitude in anticipation of the hard sought answer. "Heart break."


End file.
